I am happy to announce the release of Rockstor3.8-11. This is our third release in the Stable updates channel and I’d like to thank subscribers for their support. As usual, subscribers can just update to this release from the Web-UI.

For new users, we’ve created a brand new 3.8-11 ISO downloadable from here. After installation, please purchase Stable update subscription and take advantage of many benefits that come with it.

This release cycle was pretty exciting with increased community activity. Many users offered feedback, test results, bug reports and shared useful information with everyone else in the community. The usual code contributors submitted many pull requests to add new functionality, improve existing functionality and fix bugs. We also welcomed a new contributor in this cycle, which is always special!

All together, we closed 24 issues, 11 more compared to last cycle. There are two significant changes I’d like to highlight. We made several improvements to the Rock-Ons system, including making it easy for users and add their own custom Rock-Ons and 3rd party contributors to submit theirs for wider community. We added new Rock-Ons including Discourse and Jenkins. We also made the system significantly more robust and simpler. Expect more changes in the next cycle, but a lot of heavy lifting was done in this one.

Second significant change is to the inner workings of the Web-UI. We’ve revamped templating and overhauled existing templates using Handlebars. As a result, the UI is leaner, faster and code is a lot more readable and simpler. Most of the credit goes to @priyaganti for this massive patch set.

There are many other improvements and bugfixes to S.M.A.R.T, NUT and SSL cert management to name a few. Many thanks to @phillxnet for nicely crafted pull requests and to community members for testing and engaging in issue reporting.

In addition to above issues, we’ve also updated the default kernel to 4.3.3 along with btrfs-progs. Thank you for reading till the end! Here’s a discount code for first 25 Stable subscriptions: ROCKSTOR3811

Rockstor 3.8-10 release is now available. This is our second release in the Stable updates channel. Many thanks to users who purchased Stable update subscriptions. Your support is not only greatly appreciated, but crucial to us. If you are subscribed to Stable updates, you can easily update the system from the Web-UI.

New users can download 3.8-10 from here. Keep Rockstor live and thriving by purchasing the Stable subscription!

We closed 13 issues in this release, compared to 20 in 3.8-9. And this release took a bit longer. If you are wondering why, it’s because of the big feature improvement in this release: Asynchronous Replication. This feature efficiently replicates Shares on one Rockstor appliance to another by using BTRFS send/receive functionality. While this feature was added a while ago, it was a bit over engineered, buggy and had to be improved. I started refactoring the existing pub-sub design and ended up completely redesigning it. The result is a much simpler and more robust implementation. I plan to write more about it here and the community wiki soon.

Besides Replication, the community really came together to help fix a bunch of bugs, make several enhancements and also improve test coverage. I want to thank our regular contributors @phillxnet, @Mchakravartula, @priyaganti for their important pull requests, testing and insights. Plus, special thanks to @grogi, our new and 11th contributor! Last but not least, the community involvement has been superb with testing, bug reports and knowledge sharing. It’s very encouraging to have such a smart and diverse feedback system as we continue to improve Rockstor.

Here’s the list of issues resolved in this update with links to more information.

Rockstor 3.8-9 update is now available. This is our first update released under the stable update channel. Some of you may be aware that we split updates into Stable and Testing channels. I wrote about this briefly in the last post and there’s more information about them in our documentation as well.

Current users running prior versions can update to 3.8-9 after activating the Stable channel subscription. New users can just install from the 3.8-9 ISO. Since the launch of update subscriptions a few weeks ago, we are seeing steady purchases. I am happy to see organic traction, but we need a lot more subscriptions to keep up the effort. So, if you like Rockstor and haven’t bought the Stable subscription yet, please do!

We closed 20 issues in this release and I want to thank all the contributors. We have a dev log in our forum detailing the ongoing work and some of you may already be aware of the coming changes. Detailed list follows, but the highlights include fixes to Active Directory integration, S.M.A.R.T monitoring, better Systemd integration and improved test coverage.

I want to thank @phillxnet for contributing many minor enhancements, @Mchakravartula for improving test coverage and fixing up code along the way, @maxhq for being our new and 10th contributor(hooray!) and @roweryan for testing, reporting issues and ensuring that we aren’t slacking 🙂 Last but not least, many thanks to @vinima for contributions to documentation and video tutorials.

Rockstor 3.8-8 update is now available. This update cycle ended up a bit longer(about 4 weeks) compared to our average of 2 weeks. There are two reasons for this. (1) We closed more issues than usual and (2) We are focusing more on stability.

Going forward, we are splitting updates into two channels. For those of us that actively want to test cutting edge updates, there is now a Testing updates channel. Once we test in the dev environment and run automated tests, we’ll release an update on this channel. So an update is released roughly for each pull request, perhaps once every other day or so.

The second is the Stable updates channel. This is a slight variation of what we’ve been doing all along. But given that installs have gone up quite a bit, we’ll focus on stability and do a lot more testing to minimize risk of regressions. As a result, updates will be released at a slightly slower pace, like once in 3-4 weeks on the Stable update channel. I plan to share more details about these channels in a separate post.

Back to this update, which has many useful changes. First, support for UPS is added. I am personally looking forward to using this feature on production Rockstor systems here that serve the Forum, CI, updates etc.. Second, support for Shadow copies for Windows Samba clients is added. We plan to add more documentation and write up how-to posts about these features. Documentation for UPS has just been added, thanks to @phillxnet. Last but not least, we’ve improved the overall functional test coverage and brushed up the UI.

On the BTRFS side of things, We’ve been testing 4.2 kernels since their release and 4.2.2 is working fine in all of our machines here and we were able to test all supported BTRFS functionality. So, we’ve made 4.2.2 the default with this update. Just as important, the wonderful btrfs-progs is also updated to 4.2.1. Do note that qgroups(share sizing), replication and DR(for raid5/6) features are yet to be re-tested for improvements, so no changes to report as of now.

Rockstor 3.8-7 update is now available. Once again we are happy to push an update quicker than usual, for two additional reasons besides the obvious reason that more than average number of issues were closed already. One, there have been so many improvements since 3.8-0 ISO was baked and it’s time to create a new one. We were going to do that with 3.8-6, but a minor issue came up during testing which has since been fixed. Two, @snamstorm made really cool UI improvements which I can’t wait for users to see. It’s still an ongoing effort and I am looking forward to future changes. So, stay tuned.

If you are doing a fresh install, please download the new ISO file from here.

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to create a Rockstor USB install drive on your Mac. You can then use it to install Rockstor on a computer system of your choice. As you might have noticed, Rockstor runs a variety of hardware such as the Intel Nucor ASUS VivoPC. Anyways, lets get started! Firstly, instead of following this tutorial to create a USB installer drive of your own, you can buy one from the Rockstor shop and support our efforts. Secondly, make sure you are on a Mac, because this is a tutorial for Mac.

Make sure you have downloaded the Rockstor ISO – it can be downloaded from here. In this tutorial, I will save the ISO under downloads but you are free to save it anywhere on your Mac. My only advice is that you try not to save it on a high-level folder since you will need to access the root through the command line.

While the ISO is downloading, we can get started on formatting the USB stick. Insert it and check that it is being read by your Mac. You can do this by opening the Finder and looking at the left panel under devices.

Make sure your USB is erased and journaled. This is to make sure that nothing that was previously on your USB interferes with your Rockstor installation. You can do this easily through the Disk Utilities that come with Mac.

This can be found under:– Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities

Select your USB Drive from the side panel. Make sure to select the right drive as all data will be wiped from the drive you select to erase. Once you have selected the USB Drive, – Click on Partition
– Select 1 Partition from The Partition layout drop down menu.
– Click ApplyThis will erase everything from your USB.

There are many articles on the web showing how to mount OS X onto a USB drive using disk utility. This does not work, you will end up getting an error “Could not validate source – Invalid argument” because Apple has pretty much built this feature to only comply with their software – as they always do. Thankfully, this tutorial will help you get around this quite easily.

In your terminal, type:> diskutil listThis comes standard with Mac. A list of all disks accessible by your mac will show up. Look for your USB drive. A key indicator is the size – In this example, my USB is 16GB so it would be disk 2

Next step is to copy over the ISO you downloaded to the USB (Download the ISO here). We use ‘rdisk’ instead of disk because it is faster Type:> sudo dd if=/Users/Nam-Storm/Downloads/Downloads/Rockstor-3.8-0.iso of=/dev/rdisk2Entering the sudo command will require your admin password (due to the sudo – Super User do command). It will then take some time to copy your data and you won’t get any feedback from the terminal.

If you are unsure of the location path to the ISO then you can cd into the folder you saved the file and do a pwd.> cd Downloads/Downloads/
> ls
> pwd

Finally, you should get a message of the transfer that has taken place. This can take up to 20 minutes.

You can now check your USB to make sure the Rockstor is loaded onThat’s it – you now have a mounted USB and can use it to install your very own Rockstor.

Rockstor 3.8-6 update is now available. This one is packed with enhancements and bug fixes. And so many of them just in 10 days since the last update. There are no major features added, but all of the improvements together made Rockstor stable and polished. We’ve also tested it quite a bit, thanks to our talented community members. Linus has decided to give it a bit more testing before releasing 4.2 kernel(predicted next week), so we are looking forward to rolling it out within next two updates after some thorough testing.

There is no single highlight issue in this update, but I am pleased by the total number of issues resolved. On average, 3-5 issues are closed in a update cycle of about 2 weeks. But for this one, we closed 12 issues in 10 days. How did we do it? Community! From testing to R&D to pull requests, it’s been busy 10 days of great contributions and a rapidly improved software.

Rockstor 3.8-5 update is now available. I am very pleased with all the work that went into this update. Over all, we’ve added a couple of new features, but mostly focused on fixing several bugs and enhancing performance and user experience. This pattern of focusing on reliability and stability will continue for next few updates. With Linux 4.2 kernel around the corner, I am looking forward to improvements in BTRFS.

The highlight of this update for me, personally, is the new reworked data-collector service which improves performance and user experience. On the server side, we’ve eliminated all unnecessary I/O for stats collection, and using Gevents and SocketIO, decreased the compute and memory footprint. On the frontend, all polling for the dashboard is eliminated, making the UI a lot smoother and consume a lot less resources. We accomplished this improvement by removing more code than we added, so that’s a bonus!

We add support for setting up e-mail notifications. Users can configure to use an e-mail account they own, like a gmail or zoho account and Rockstor uses the supplied credentials to send e-mail notifications to your preferred e-mail address. All root e-mail, for example, is forwarded by default and other services like SMARTD that can send e-mail notifications and take advantage of this setup.

Finally, most of the work for this update was around bug fixes and enhancements. After this update, users will notice UI to be smoother and more responsive. We’ve also closed subtle server side bugs. Many thanks to our community members for their valuable time and contributions in helping us fix these issues faster. Below is a more detailed account of the work, issue by issue.

1. Reworked the data-collector service and removed dashboard polling. Both server and client side performance is significantly improved and all unnecessary IO is eliminated. #763@gkadillak@schakrava

I’ve been looking for an alternative to back up my iPhone 5S 16GB (iOS 8.4) in order to free up space to upgrade to iOS 8.4.1 that wouldn’t install as it needs 691MB of additional storage. The biggest storage suck on my phone is the ‘Photos and Camera’ folder (7.1 GB). The alternatives for additional storage are to upgrade my iPhone, delete unwanted pictures and videos, or put data onto the iCloud. A quick search revealed some other options but none of these alternatives seem appealing, because :

1) My iPhone is in perfect working condition

2) Deleting unwanted data and videos is too much of a hassle

3) Backing up the iPhone to Google Drive or Dropbox or an external hard-drive is not an option as I have a Rockstor powered NAS box at home

4) Backing up to a computer (Macbook for me) is not attractive either, as I prefer my photos sync to backup daily

5) Buying more storage on iCloud is its own beast. It involves recurring payments (that I despise as these appear innocuous upfront but then sneakily add-up). Take a look at the monthly iCloud plans in the US.

Even though it does not apply to my use-case, it is worth noticing if there are 4 users in a household, it would cost approximately $48 a year (assuming $0.99, 20GB plan per year for each of the users), and if you are a small business and you and your employees need to share photos on iCloud, it comes with its own restrictions and limit. Click here to know these restrictions.

6. Another reason to not upgrade to iCloud or Google Drive or Dropbox is privacy. While it is not important to me at this point, as my Camera folder contains everyday photos, but could matter to certain users. Apple manages encryption and there have been news about recent iCloud hacks into celebrity photos and articles about hacking into iCloud.

So, it was time to look for another solution and I found the solution right up my alley – a Rockstor powered box with Bittorrent Sync Rock-on. In this blog, I describe the process of setting up backup for your iPhone. (Note : I’ve used free version of BTSync 2.0 for this use-case. When you first install BTSync rock-on, the trial version of BTSync Pro is automatically turned on. I am still under free-trial, but will test the behavior once the trial period expires. I understand that there are restrictions like, folder limit to 10, that apply to free version and BTSync Pro is pretty expensive, $39.99 per year, per device, so it would cost $79.98 to use Rockstor + BTync + iOS for backup, and iCloud plan up to 200GB is cheaper compared to BTSync 2.0 Pro.).

First step was to download and install Sync app on my iPhone (search for ‘BTSync’ in App Store). The app looks something like this :

Once the Sync app was installed on my iPhone, the next was to start configure the Rockstor box and start BTSync Rock-on and then sync iPhone to Rockstor box using BTSync.

1. I am assuming your Rockstor box is already setup. If you are new to Rockstor, read the Quick start guide. I created a 100GB share called ‘vinima_iphone_backup’ in the ‘rockstor_rockstor’ pool.

2. Installing the BTSync Rock-on is pretty simple. Just follow the install wizard with defaults as documented here with screenshots. After the initial Rockstor settings, its time to start the BTSync service.

3. Now, it’s time to configure the BTSync Rock-on. In BTSync Install Wizard, choose “vinima_iphone_backup” for Data Storage. This folder (share) was created created in step 1.

4. This share shows under ‘Resource Type’ under BTSync Install Wizard. Click ‘Next’ and then click ‘Submit’ to finish installation.

5. Proceed to start the BTSync service on Web-UI.

6. I tried to link iPhone to Rockstor backup by scanning the QR code on iPhone and manually (by copying the key) to ‘ BT Sync’ app on my iPhone. You may need to scan either the QR code or enter the key manually. For some reason, scanning QR code didn’t link the iPhone and Rockstor backup for me, so I copied the key. Once the code is accepted, BTSync Rock-on detects the ‘Sync’ App on my iPhone. I pointed to “vinima_iphone_backup” share.

7. Once the iPhone and Rockstor box are synced, you can see the file transfer. You can look under ‘History’ in Web UI to see the individual files uploaded. After syncing, a random name ‘8079baf89ba’ was assigned to the BTSync rock-on on Rockstor box. I changed this random name to ‘BTSync-Rockstor’ under “Preferences” in the BTSync Web UI.

7. This is how things look on my iPhone. BTSync app identifies the BTSync service on Rockstor box and starts backing up my files from my camera. According to BTSync help you can only backup your iPhone camera roll, which was actually consuming most of cloud storage for my use-case, but yes, it may not work if you have music or other data on your iPhone that you want to backup. Quoting from BTSync documentation “While Android can back up data from virtually any location the device can reach, iOS applications cannot read files outside the application folder. So the iOS version of Sync can only back up Camera Roll as it is can be accessed by any application if user grants permissions to do it”)

8. Once the file transfer starts, go to the command line, to check the status of file transfer. The status of transfer-in-progress and completed transfer are shown below. You can also check the status by clicking “History” on the BTSync WebUI.

According to the BTSync help documentation, have the backup option always turned on “When backup is enabled, even if you delete the backed up files from your mobile device, their copies will remain intact on the computer you’ve backed them up to.” The initial set-up for backup was done within my home network. It is a good idea to have your phone fully charged as syncing drains out the battery fast. I was able to sync my phone outside of the home network when I was connected to Wi-Fi. Synching outside the home network happens due to a protocol called uPnP (Universal Plug and Play) which works pretty well with the Sync app.

My next step will be to empty the “Photos and Camera” folder. My next blog will discuss that process in addition to the behavior of BTSync beyond the trial period. Also, I will be investigating the possibility of seeing thumbnails of backed up images.

Rockstor 3.8-4 update is now available. This is mostly a bug fix release barring one new feature, a major one that some of our users have been waiting for. We are getting great community feedback lately which is helping us hunt bugs down and fix them. So for next few updates, the focus will primarily be on bug fixes to make Rockstor more and more reliable. We may still add small features and enhancements, but bug fixing will be the priority. Given that both Rockstor and BTRFS are cutting edge, we may be a few releases away before calming down. It’s getting close!

The new feature in this update let’s you take a config backup of the system and restore it later. This is meant to be useful after rebuilding a Rockstor system after a root drive crash. Users, groups, NFS/Samba/AFP exports and service configurations can be restored easily.

As with the last update, we’ve also fixed a bunch of bugs, thanks to our community We are prioritizing all serious bugs reported for future updates. All critical bugs are listed here. Every bug in this list is treated with high priority.